Wednesday, April 2, 2008

Mission Statement



The Red Ink Diary is a blog with a mission.

My main focus will be on all things eBay, from the viewpoint of a long time Seller, who is also a buyer and an Answer Center Volunteer Responder. Maybe I should clarify that. The viewpoint of a 'has been' eBay community member who is journeying into the great unknown; life after eBay.

WHY Red Ink?
We all know that Red Ink is a symbol of deficit, it has negative connotations. eBay has lots of red ink, not financially at this point, but everywhere else is a sea of Red Ink. Customer goodwill, customer service, public relations, ethics, plenty of interesting material for me to write about.

I welcome guest bloggers & reader comments. I will not tolerate profanity, rants or blatant advertising, except my own. I reserve the right to red ink. Comments will be moderated. Spam will be deleted or reposted minus links.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

End of an era.
After the SIS debacle we removed over 3K multi item listings from our eBay store and made our own website. We were joined by two other ex-eBay shops, soon to be three and a service business.

After the Donahoe announcement we opened accounts at eCRATER and Loudfrog. We like to run auctions as promotion for the website but with our low ASP we can no longer AFFORD eBay fees which currently suck up over 50% of gross. Sell through rates have been dropping on eBay for six months.

Both eCRATER and Loudfrog are run by honest people who want sellers, listen to them and respond factually to questions. Yep, real people read your mail and answer you, incredible. Lower overhead means we are able to list at lower prices giving better bargains to our customers.

Doug in Utah is absolutely right "common sense clearly identifies preservation of buyer experience as key" I am not sure he fully understands the concept or he would not have left out the word POSITIVE, it is "preservation of POSITIVE buyer experience IS key to retail success"

It is no longer possible to preserve positive buyer experience on eBay. The new search is frustrating for both buyers and sellers, the fee increases raise prices and the continued influx of hordes of China based sellers of cheap knockoffs and fakes debases the entire site.

eBay was good. eBay was built by small sellers most of whom are also buyers and most of whom will leave this year. RIP